Memories of times past

Edwardsburg native recounts her days growing up.

Edwardsburg native recounts her days growing up.

December 26, 2005|D.L. PERRIN Tribune Correspondent

EDWARDSBURG All these years later, she remembers those tulips. "When I was little, Mrs. Fisk raised prize tulips," said Marjorie Jane Silver-Federowski. "I admired them greatly, so I picked the biggest red one I could find. It was beautiful." Mrs. Fisk was surprisingly calm about it. "She took me by the hand, and we walked over to my house to tell my mother what I had done." Marj's mother thought for a while and told Mrs. Fisk, " 'If Marjorie admires the tulip that much, then we should pin it to the front of her dress where it will stay all day.' " Marj said she must have learned her lesson because she can remember the incident like it was yesterday. Marj was a guest speaker for the Edwardsburg Area Museum Group. Her ancestors were among seven Silver brothers from New Hampshire looking for a new start on the Michigan prairie during the early 1800s. She can still trace her roots and the roots of many of her neighbors to those pioneering families. "I was born in December of 1928 in the same house where I was raised," Marj said. "The day I was born, the doctor stopped by at lunchtime to check my mother. After examining her, he told my father he would be back at midnight." "And sure enough -- I was born at midnight," Marj said with a chuckle. The doctor gave her mother a choice of birthdates. "My mother said she did all the work on the 19th, so even though it was a little past midnight, she made my birthday the 19th." Marj's mother, Lulu, had had a son, Albert, and two daughters, Thelma and Carrie, by her first husband, Guernsey Bacon. After Bacon's death, she married Benjamin Silver, and had Marj and Francis. Like most small-town families back then, their homestead had fruit trees, a huge garden and some chickens. "We had a cow for a while, but the cow was not considered a proper animal to be kept in town, so she had to go, but we kept the chickens." Marj's older brother Albert graduated from high school in 1933 and found there were few jobs. He decided to work a large plot of the family farm outside of town. "Times were tough, but we managed," recalled Marj. "My brother planted corn and melons and raised chickens. "I can remember my mother helping him prepare the chickens for sale. They sold for one dollar; ready to cook." It was the time of the Great Depression, and they were lucky to have land to farm. Later Marj became the district librarian in Cass County, so her calling came early. Being a very tall youngster, Marj said people must have thought she was more mature than other girls her age. She was given baby-sitting jobs as early as 11. "When I was 14, I decided I could make more money if I looked after a group of children for a few hours each morning and charged 15 cents per child a day." Marj opened her nursery school and had children signed up from 9 a.m. to noon. But Marj didn't just look after the children. She created lessons to teach them numbers, colors and basic words. "When I turned 15, I raised the rate to 20 cents per child per day. I was experienced by then." One day family friend Ada Beardsley, wife of Miles Corp. president Charles Beardsley, stopped by the house and observed Marj with her gaggle of children. "She told my mother that I should be sent to college." The Beardsleys paid for her tuition, room and board, but Marj had to find work to pay for books. The Beardsleys also helped other children in town attend college. Marj graduated from Edwardsburg High School at the age of 17 with a class of 17 and went on to graduate from Western Michigan University with a bachelor's degree in library science and English and a minor in history. Now retired, Marj has been a Cass County Commissioner and was very active in passing a permanent library millage in 1993 and was a motivator behind the construction of the current Edwardsburg Library in 1995. She married Alexander Federowski in 1956; they have three children and two stepchildren, Dora, Dan, Rachel, Alex and Mary.